Cradle
by MrsTater
Summary: The House of the Undying changes Dany, and Jorah notices. post-2x10


_**Jorah/Dany is my OTP, but that scene in the House of the Undying gave me a lot of feels. Way to go, Emilia Clarke!**_

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**Cradle**

"The sea is calm, but you are not," Jorah said as he joined Daenerys at the ship's railing, where she stood gazing out at the dark water, barely distinguishable from the night sky except for the spots of moonlight reflected upon the waves that lapped gently against the hull as the streams back home. "Would you be more at ease if we sailed in a squall, Daenerys Stormborn?"

Her lips twitched into a smile at his joke, but Jorah saw that her eyes remained dark, untouched by mirth. He glanced downward, and looked at his fingers, which rubbed idly along the smooth wooden edge of the vessel.

"Forgive me if I speak out of turn, my queen, but I cannot help but notice that since you went into the House of the Undying, you are…changed."

Daenerys made no reply, but neither did she rebuke him. Perhaps she did not even hear him, he thought, returning his gaze to her face (he never could keep it away long, regardless of whether he was worried about her state of mind or not), so intent was she upon her thoughts as she stared resolutely out to sea. In any case, Jorah could no longer keep _his_ thoughts to himself.

"It must have been upsetting, to see how the warlock who murdered so many of your people held captive your dragons-your children," he corrected himself, sensing-or imagining -that she bristled at his side; he had no wish to repeat his past mistake of devaluing the dragons, no matter how strange her regard for the beasts seemed to him.

"I saw Khal Drogo," Daenerys replied, very quietly, almost in a monotone. But there was a catch in her voice and the first glimmer in her eyes since the conversation began when she added, "And Rhaego."

An emotion clutched at Jorah's heart that he could only name jealousy, though its hold promptly loosened when Daenerys turned to him, a look of such tenderness on her face as the moon shone down on her from above, even if it was inspired by the memory of another man she had loved, and of the child he had put in her belly, that Jorah could not begrudge her. Or her husband; Khal Drogo was dead.

"My son was not as the witch said he was," she told him, the smile on her lips this time reaching her eyes. "He was not a monster who had been expelled lifeless from my womb, but alive and beautiful and _perfect._ So perfect that for a moment I forgot everything-my people, my dragons-and hoped that I had died, too, so that I might join them in the Night Lands."

A sob cracked her voice, and Jorah's own throat constricted. Not only because he thought again (though when did he not think of it?) of that night when he'd thought she intended to die on her husband's funeral pyre to do exactly what she spoke of now, but because her grief was so palpable that a man would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it. He uncurled the fingers of his right hand from the rail, instinctively raising it to comfort her-though he hesitated just shy of laying it on her shoulder, remembering his last attempt at comforting her with such a touch, when she reprimanded him as too familiar. After a moment he decided to chance it; he must know that she was not alone in her sorrow, no matter how strongly she believed that to be the case.

Though instead of squeezing her shoulder, at the last moment he brought his hand higher to cradle her cheek in his curved palm, instead. The same gesture by which she, on more than one occasion, had comforted him. When she did not flinch away from his touch, but instead leaned into it, his lungs seemed unsure whether to let out a relieved breath, or to catch it in surprise.

"You've given so much to your people that you haven't had time to see to your own grief."

"Does a queen have the luxury of grief?"

Jorah opened his mouth with the intent of speaking to her of her gentle heart, but could not find his voice when he felt the heat and the wet of tears between his palm and her cheek. And then the cool of the breeze when she wrapped her arms about her own waist, hugging herself, and turned from him. Though she did not move away; her bare shoulder brushed against his sleeve as she looked once more out to sea.

"I never even had the chance to hold him," she said, the tear's trail shining on her cheek in the moonlight. "I'd almost forgotten that I'd grown him in my womb…felt him move inside me…The Stallion Who Mounts the World."

"My first wife lost three babes," Jorah heard himself rasp without the words having formed first in his mind. "Miscarried, born too soon to live, born dead…"

Daenerys looked up at him, wearing much the same look as _she _had when he'd entered the birthing room after Maege, who attended the births, gave him the sad news. Jorah didn't know what words of comfort to offer now any more than he had then, but that didn't make him stand mute as he lowered his gaze to again watch his fingers again over the railing.

"She said that she could not have grieved more for her babes if they had been torn from her breasts and slaughtered before her eyes. And I think…no, I _know," _he amended, looking Daenerys in the eye, "that she would have found comfort in a queen who was acquainted with the sorrows of mothers who weep beside empty cradles."

More tears rolled out of Daenerys' eyes and streaked twin trails down her face. "And how did Lady Mormont find comfort in you, Jorah?"

"In my arms."

"As will I," she choked out.

Jorah embraced the Dragon Queen, cradling her against his chest as a she released a storm of tears for her little child who had died before he had been born. And his own troubles were soothed when she remained there long after her shuddering sobs had subsided, and the sea rocked them both with the calm of a mother with her children.


End file.
